The Earth Beneath My Feet

Thoughts on Why Every Runner Should Run And Race Off-Road

Going Natural

by Roger Robinson

Look at your foot. Either one will do. Consider that curved, asymmetric shape, the widest part near the front, the raised arch, the tapered heel with its padding, those separated extensions at the front, flexible and prehensile, their vulnerable tips protected by a hard carapace. What can such a weird thing be intended for? The answer is simple—to run cross country.

The human foot is a supreme, designer-built springboard for fast bipedal movement over uneven surfaces. If we were meant to do our running all on hard, flat, blank concrete, as too many 21st-century runners do, our feet would surely be small squares of shock-absorbent pneumatic padding, probably with interior springs.

Listen to the message of your feet, and try running cross country. It’s natural, full of variety, interest, and delight, it’s beneficial, and it’s beautiful. It gives you one of the greatest gifts possible in our arid age of artifice—personal contact with the old earth. To go through life without ever moving over real ground is like never touching the face of your lover.

By cross country, we mean any running on dirt or grass or natural-surface trails; not necessarily racing, though that’s something every runner should try. And we do not mean you should do it barefoot, not unless you passed your childhood that way. Even hardened soles cannot protect against the jagged debris of modern society. But do wear shoes that let your foot flex and feel the ground. That is one thing cross country is about.

It’s also about running up and down hills, flat fields, rocky gullies, shifting sand, sloppy mud, clinging clay, and fresh firm grass where your feet spring like lambs, and dank forests where roots trap your ankles and branches stab your face. Whatever the earth provides, wherever you happen to be. As Jonathan Beverly and I email ideas between us for this article, one of us looks up into a rolling brown and endless Nebraska prairie, the other is perched above the dense green island that is Central Park in the midst of Manhattan. Yet both of us ran on country today. One has dry, sandy red grains and cactus spines clinging to his training shoes, the other leaves traces of tacky mud, squashed blossoms, and wisps of horse droppings. Different worlds, different ground—but the same basic human delight in running on those flexible feet over the earth ahead, whatever it brings.

The impulse and the need to run across country are age-old. The route from Marathon to Athens was at best a goat track when an army messenger ran with the important news of victory in 490 B.C. Modern cross country racing began when English schoolboys in the early 1800s ran "hare and hounds" and "steeplechases" in imitation of the equestrian pastimes of their fathers, scrambling over hedges and wading through streams just as the horses did. And well beyond that date, running over country remained a necessary skill among native Americans, mail carriers in India, and in every army.

Even today, it’s a great source of reassurance to know that if the need arose you could run an hour or so across country. That might seem more likely in Nebraska, but a year ago, if the power outage on the East Coast had lasted longer, it would have been the runners who would have quickly escaped the festering cities.

For the recreational runner, in a safe world (if there is such a thing) the benefits and the beauties of running across country are still immense. You gain versatility, quick response, strength, and competitive edge. You become able to run any terrain, any gradient, any and surface, any weather. Those who grumble about wind or rain affecting their performance in a race should stick to mall walking—or learn to handle whatever nature throws at them. You do that by running in contact with nature, in parks and woods, on trails, beaches, or open country, or, best of all, all the above.

Getting Tough

by Jonathan Beverly

Those who start running in school have the benefit of discovering competitive running through fall cross country. For many of us, that training and racing over hills and through forest trails, with grass, mud, and fallen leaves underfoot, remain some of our most pleasant running memories. For many they stay memories, as we graduate to adult running on the road with occasional forays to the track for speedwork. For many who come to running and racing later in life, cross country is completely foreign to their experience.

This is unfortunate, for cross country, or trail running, is not only the source of great running joy, but an essential element in developing into a champion runner. A cursory look at the results of the World Cross Country Championships over the past few decades reveals that the world’s best runners don’t ignore this venue (see chart on page 42). In fact, there appears to be a strong correlation between those who excel in cross country and those who win medals and set records on the track and roads.

At the World Cross Country Championships in Brussels last March, Bob Kennedy opined: "As a culture, we don’t realize how big this is, how it can play a role in your track season." At the same venue, Olympic steeplechaser Robert Gary commented, "I regret not coming here more often, that’s for sure."

Part of the benefit is in the training. Bill Rodgers, who won a bronze medal at World Cross in Rabat in 1975, just weeks before he broke through with his American-record 2:09:55 in Boston, says cross country running is "a tremendous type of training. It plays a big role in strengthening both your body and your mind. If you look at the best in the world—Kenyans and Ethiopians—they run cross country, over rough, hilly terrain. If you train only on flats you’re not going to be a complete runner." Rodgers’s training that spring included many hilly eight-mile runs at 5:20 pace and hill repeats at a local golf course.

Kate O’Neill, who ran to a 15th place overall and top-American finish in the 8K in Brussels before going on to make the Olympic team in the 10,000m, agrees. "It makes you tougher," she says of mile repeats she does on a golf course with a "huge hill" that she runs regularly in the fall and winter. But, far from dreading it, she said in mid-track season, "It is so fun to do intervals there, the miles go by so much faster than on the track. . . . I’m already looking forward to intervals on the golf course."

Many of the benefits, however, come only from racing off-road and are missed by those who use trails simply for their easy recovery days. Several of these were highlighted in post-race interviews with U.S. runners at the Brussels World Cross. A big one is learning how to race, not just pace—since you can’t pace in the normal sense, lacking splits and always faced with a different grade or surface. O’Neill said, "It was crazy, with the mud and the crowds—I couldn’t get a sense of pace, so I decided I wanted to make it hurt the whole way, and put in effort when [I] could." Ian Conner agreed: "It is just all-out, no settling in . . . you just try to maintain, to suck it up."

What this means for the runner is that you learn to monitor those subtle, internal signals that are the best feedback on effort for those who learn to hear them. You also have less tendency to limit yourself and stick to a preconceived pace, and you learn to continue to push the effort through fatigue and pain. All of this will translate to better racing on the track or roads. O’Neill said after her "hurt-the-whole-way" strategy paid off, "Hopefully I can bring some of that ‘in the moment’ thinking to the track this spring. In the past, my thinking was ‘Every lap has to be the same pace.’"

Another benefit is developing the mental toughness that racing well in any venue requires but cross country insists on. Lauren Fleshman said of the mental aspect: "That is the biggest challenge. I was very aware that I was stuck in a pace. . . . I was like, ‘I think I can go faster than this, but I just don’t know how to summon the will to get out of this rut.’ [The conditions were] the toughest mentally: If you’re on a nice, even, soft grass with no mud, if you get stuck in a rut, you can just input a little energy to get out of that, but in these conditions . . . it takes more than the woman I am today."

In the end, racing cross country is finding out what you’re made of. According to Shalane Flanagan, "That was a real challenge, a good eye-opener for me for the kind of work I need to do in the next few months." Abdi Abdirahman said, "It shows your strength, it shows your weakness." Both Flanagan and Abdirahman, first Americans in their respective races in Brussels, went on to make the Olympic team bound for Athens.

Why race cross country? Baylor sophomore Brittany Brockman, who had a disappointing day competing for the U.S. women’s junior team in Brussels, may have summed up the final word on why it was worthwhile: "Next week a 5K will feel like nothing compared to this."